The Leader in Mobile Phone News and Reviews

Asus’ naming convention is getting more and more confusing with each passing day. Navigating already official models is a challenge in itself, but when it comes to analyzing leaks, it really takes some dedicated investigative work to get the facts straight.

This time around, however, we have an almost suspiciously straight-forward scoop.

The Zenfone 3 Go appears to be a revival of the budget “Go” line. Last we saw a Go unit up on offer was in 2015. The original Asus Zenfone Go ZC500TG bore the typical Zenfone 2 design language, including the bulky arching back and a horizontally centered main camera.

The new Zenfone 3 Go, on the other hand, logically shares most of its aesthetic with the rest of the Zenfone 3 family. The back is flat and from the looks of things has a brushed metal finish. There is no rear-mounted button, nor any physical controls on the front.

Also, the camera design now appears smaller and its circular shape and position near the edge, make the Zenfone 3 Go really blend in with many contemporary offers from the likes of Oppo, Vivo or Meizu.

Apart from the nifty renders, the leak also shares some alleged specs for the Zenfone 3 Go. These include a 5-inch 720p display, Snapdragon 410 chipset, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The camera setup consists of a 13MP main shooter with 1.4 μm pixel size and a 5MP selfie one. Overall, nothing really impressive, but still a pretty decent offer, considering the EUR 150 suggested price point.

The Asus Zenfone 2 was impressive enough for a $200 or so phone when it was announced earlier this year at the CES expo in Las Vegas, but when we learned that it will have a version with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage memory, it quickly became a handset to keep an eye on.

Well, now that the Zenfone 2, in all of its 5″ and 5.5″ screen reincarnations, has been on sale for a while, it’s time to whip up the discounts, concluded Asus, and offered the flash sale you can see in the screenshot above. The 5.5″ Zenfone 2, with model number ZE551ML, which is the decked-out version with 4 GB of RAM, will be on offer for one day only, May 7th. How much? Well, it will go for just $336.99 on AliExpress, instead of the retail $449.32 price.

That’s a whopping $112 off, and might have something to do with Lenovo announcing the K80 with a 4 GB RAM/64 GB storage option for $290, but with a much larger, 4000 mAh battery, and an optically-stabilized camera. In any case, that Lenovo K80 version is still not on sale, so if you want to score the first phone with 4 GB of RAM, it doesn’t get much better than this $337 deal, with a free shipping to most countries worldwide.

But Asus’s approach is far less dramatic than much of the competition. The company has focused its efforts on taking a far more peaceful approach to consumer electronics, first through its Zen line and now in the form of its latest Transformer convertible tablet, the T300 Chi.

In Taoist philosophy, Chi represents the vital life force circulating through all living things — and more to the point, in the case of this Windows 8.1 tablet, a balance between negative and positive forces essential to harmonic living. For Asus, it’s striking the balance between the two often-at odds gadget categories of laptop and tablet, an attempt to design a product that fulfills the need for both.

It’s also, coincidentally Microsoft’s dream with Windows 8. Given the current state of electronics, it seemingly shouldn’t be an impossible dream. Yet it has traditionally been a difficult one to pull off. Past attempts have often been too underpowered for laptop status or too bulky to truly function as a tablet. As with the Taoist principle, it’s a concept much easier said than done.

With the T300 Chi, Asus has seemingly drawn a line in the sand, describing the convertible not as a tablet and keyboard dock. For the company, it’s but rather as an “ultra-slim laptop [that] transforms seamlessly into a tablet.” A device rooted in the notion that balance is truly attainable.

The one-two punch
The greatest trick the T300 Chi plays is convincing the world that it is a laptop. No joke, there were a handful of occasions in which I forgot the display also happened to be a touchscreen tablet. Several times, I forgot that the power button was located on the display like a tablet. Blame it on my short-term memory, if you must, but I’ve chosen the seamless integration of the slate and dock as the real culprit.

In fact, the next time I am at a coffee shop I plan to mess with the mind of the dude across from me writing his screenplay by “accidentally” ripping the screen off my shiny new laptop. I’ll let you know how that works.

Taken together, the tablet and keyboard clasp together at 0.64-inches, an impressive feat for a 2-in-1 device that shaves a few precious fractions of an inch off the latest MacBook Air. At 3.15 pounds, it’s notably heavier than some of the ultraportable competition, but certainly light enough to comfortably pop into a backpack.

Tear-away tablet
Asus should require users to spend some time with past Surface tablets before picking up the T300 Chi to help customers grasp just how slick the Windows 8.1 tablet is. This thing makes Microsoft’s devices feel like bulky, early prototypes. This thing makes Microsoft’s devices feel like bulky, early prototypes. Stripped of its keyboard, the slate weighs 1.58 pounds, notably lighter than the Surface 3’s 1.76 pound weight.

The speakers are located on either side of the tablet. Speaker positioning is a tricky proposition when it comes to tablets; I’m not too fond of how one’s hands can easily block the skinny grilles while holding the tablet solo. But honestly, you’re not really missing much — the things are pretty dismal.

Asus’s claim of “premium stereo sound” are pretty far afield. You’re going to want to plug in or sync somewhere else if you’re planning to watch a full movie. Perhaps this is a bit of a bulky pipe dream, but what about a little bit of supplemental speaker power in the keyboard dock?

More tablet than PC
The $899 model Asus set us up with has some some solid innards, including 8GB of RAM and a solid 128GB of storage, which you can double via a little microSD slot tucked away on the bottom of the tablet. The 1.2GHZ Intel Core M 5Y71 is plenty capable of zippy multitasking, but won’t be doing any graphical heavy-lifting any time soon.

That’s a key distinction with the T300 Chi, incidentally — as much as it looks like a full-on ultrabook from the outside, the hardware specs put it well within the high-end tablet camp. It’s not a device capable of fulfilling all of your laptop needs, but rather supplementing them It’s not a device capable of fulfilling all of your laptop needs, but rather supplementing them — a fact made all the more apparent by the presence of things like the Micro USB 3.0 port, which requires an adapter to work with full-size USB accessories.

Other subtler touches like the placement of the power button in the upper left corner seem to point to a device designed as a tablet first. I found it extremely difficult to manually adjust the screen angle without accidentally hitting the button. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but it’s a constant reminder of just how difficult it is to juggle those worlds.

What’s up (with the) dock
The tablet connects magnetically to the dock, snapping around a pair of metal tongs. Once in place, the tablet is secure, though the slate will wobble a bit if you tap the screen too aggressively. Interestingly, the tongs only serve to hold the tablet in place. All communication between the two parts actually happen via Bluetooth, meaning you’ll have to wake the keyboard up separately.

This also means that you’ve got two separate batteries that need charging — though you can simply run a cord between the tablet and dock while the former is plugged in for a sort of daisy-chained charging routine. And as with the speakers, it feels like there’s a missed opportunity to include an extended battery in the dock to help bolster the tablet’s limited life.

In fact, I’d have welcomed a little more weight on the keyboard. As it stands, the device is extremely top heavy, and if you’re prone to use your laptop in your lap, it’ll be prone to topple over. When using the combo, you’re going to want to position them on a flat surface.

The keyboard itself is nice, if perhaps a little on the soft side — but nothing a user won’t quickly acclimate to. The trackpad, meanwhile, is a bit short, owing to the tablet’s dimension, but remember, you’ve also got the power of touch working for you here. Once again, it leaves something to be desired in terms of a primary laptop, but should make for a perfectly acceptable travel device.

An uneven balance
There’s a lot to like with the T300 Chi. It’s a hybrid Windows 8.1 device that subscribes wholeheartedly to the notion that it can truly be the best of both worlds — and it comes a heck of a lot closer than so many past attempts. In the end, however, the T300 Chi naturally falls a little short in its attempt to please everyone all the time.

The T300 Chi misses the ultraportable PC mark The T300 Chi misses the ultraportable PC mark, instead falling into the high-end tablet space. Much to its credit, it does so with a lot of style. It’s a really gorgeous piece of hardware with some high-end specs — high-end for a tablet, that is.

As high-minded as the Chi concept it invokes is, it’s a reminder of how difficult balance can be between the two spaces. Taken as a PC, the device may fall short, but, some hardware quibbles aside, this is easily one of the best Windows tablets on the market.

Asus has introduced a new Fonepad 7 (model number FE375CL) which runs Android 5.0 Lollipop and is listed on the company’s Taiwan website.

The price of the voice-calling tablet is listed as ​​$250 which is approximately around Rs 15,000 in Indian currency, although the global pricing has not been confirmed yet.

The features of the new FonePad 7 include a 7-inch WXGA (1280×800 pixels) IPS LED-backlit display, 8 GB or 16 GB storage space, along with microSD support which can be expanded up to 64GB.

It has a quad-core 64-bit Intel Atom Z3530 processor clocked at 1.3GHz with 2GB of RAM. The front camera is 2 megapixel while the rear camera is 5 megapixel. This is a 4G LTE capable tablet and also supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0.

Asus also claims the new Fonepad 7 has up to 12 hours of battery life and this tab weights only 299 grams.

Asus launched its new flagship smartphone, the ZenFone 2, which has something different inside: a 64-bit Intel chip. The ZenFone 2 packs one of Intel’s newest quad-core 2.3GHz Atom processors, setting it apart from the vast majority of smartphones that opt for an ARM-based chip. The Intel chip, which can be paired with a whopping 4GB of RAM, is capable of 64-bit processing, putting it in the same league as Apple’s more recent chips; 64-bit apps are supported in Android 5.0 “Lollipop,” and that’s exactly what the ZenFone 2 runs.

So yes, this is a flagship. If there were any question, just look at the spec sheet: a 5.5-inch IPS (in-plane switching) full HD display, a 13-megapixel rear camera, support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi and several LTE bands, a 3,000 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery, and storage options up to 64GB. Dual SIM card slots betray the ZenFone’s target market (i.e. not the U.S., where the company has virtually no market share).

Asus updated the design of the ZenFone with a curved, brushed-metal back and a minimal bezel around the screen. Similar to LG’s phones, the ZenFone 2 puts volume buttons on the back, just below the camera.

Besides the ZenFone 2, Asus is also launching the ZenFone Zoom, a smartphone that remarkably includes a camera with a 3x optical zoom. While it’s not the first phone with a zoom, Asus claims it’s the world’s thinnest. Backing up the 10-element lens is optical image stabilization, which can compensate for some camera shake, leading to fewer blurry pics.

Asus priced the ZenFone 2 to sell: A version with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage sells for just $199 US (that’s with no contract), launching in the coming weeks. No pricing or availability yet on the ZenFone Zoom.

Asus has announced a lite-variant of the Zenfone 5 (A501CG) smartphone, dubbed ZenFone 5 (A502CG), in the Philippines at PHP 5,595 (approximately Rs. 7,600). The smartphone will go on sale next week across authorised resellers in the Philippines. As yet, there are no details of the smartphone’s global release.
The dual-SIM Asus ZenFone 5 (A502CG) runs Android 4.4 KitKat out-of-the-box. It features a 5-inch qHD (540×960 pixels) display instead of a HD (720×1280 pixel) display seen on ZenFone 5 (A501CG).

The processor and RAM have also been downgraded in ZenFone 5 (A502CG). It is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2520 processor with Hyper-Threading (implying four threads) coupled with 1GB of RAM, as opposed to the ZenFone 5 (A501CG) – which comes with a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 processor with Hyper-Threading that’s coupled with 2GB of RAM.

Of course, not everything on the Asus ZenFone 5 (A502CG) has been downgraded from the original by the company – in fact, there is also a bump-up – the smartphone packs a larger up battery with a 2500mAh capacity instead of the 2110mAh battery in the ZenFone 5 (A501CG). The rest of the specifications of the Asus ZenFone 5 (A502CG) are almost the same as the Asus ZenFone 5 (A501CG). It will also be available in Charcoal Black, Pearl White and Cherry Red colour options in Philippines.

The smartphone listed on the Asus Philippines website as the ZenFone (A502CG) is also known as ZenFone 5 Lite, as per the site that first spotted the listing – Yugatech.
Notably, Asus CEO Jerry Shen last week confirmed the company would launch a second series of ZenFone smartphones next year, the ZenFone 2 series, which will be cheaper and priced as low as NTD 4,990 (roughly Rs. 10,000). The ZenFone 2 series will be powered by a second chipmaker, and will be available early next year with two of the biggest Chinese carriers – China Mobile Ltd and China Telecom Corp – while the refreshed models of the original series will be designed for the global markets, as per Shen. Notably, the Shen says smartphones due at CES 2015 will be the new Intel-powered ones.
Last month, Asus had confirmed that six of its devices (and their variants) will be receiving an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop next year. The list of devices scheduled to receive the Android 5.0 Lollipop includes the popular Asus ZenFone series of smartphones – ZenFone 4, ZenFone 5, and ZenFone 6 – alongside Padfone S and Padfone Infinity .